His sleeve brushed my bare arm as he leaned against the balustrade next to me. It was one of those unseasonably warm May days, one of those days when England tried to make up for the previous nine months in a blaze of sunshine and a riot of spring flowers. In short, it was very heaven and I was definitely going to get a sunburn.
“I hit a breaking point,” I said. “Did you know that Napoleon commissioned a submarine to blow up the Channel fleet? He uncommissioned it because he claimed it leaked.”
There was also the small matter of Augustus Whittlesby running off with the plans and Bonaparte’s stepdaughter’s best friend. I’d been curious enough to look up Whittlesby in the
He had a wife called Emma.
Women seldom fare well in printed history. It’s only the murderesses and adventuresses who achieve recognition in their own right. Otherwise, they seem to be remembered primarily in relation to the men in their lives, and Emma was no exception. Augustus Whittlesby was married to Emma Morris Delagardie, niece to the American president James Monroe. Of the rest of it, nothing. There was nothing to indicate what her life would have been once she followed Augustus to England.
Was she happy? I wondered. Did she regret the loss of her old school friends in France? Was she lonely without them, without the world she had built up around herself?
It wasn’t Emma Delagardie Whittlesby I was worried about, I realized. It was me. I wasn’t asking so much whether Emma had fit in, but whether I would. It made sense, I supposed. Two New Yorkers, two Englishmen, two centuries apart. The parallels were hard to ignore, especially with the question so very much on my mind: Would I be a fool to stay in England? Or would I be an even worse fool to go?
There was a major difference between me and Emma Delagardie. France was an adopted country for her, a transitory place, changing all around her. She had already left her family and home far behind. Whereas for me…
Well, maybe Cambridge was, too. Our first day of grad school, the head of the department had given us a speech, of which the most memorable—and most repeated—line was “Cambridge is a lovely place to live. It is also a lovely place to leave.” Translation: They wanted us to finish our degrees and get out, not hang around forever.
Like Emma in Paris, my Cambridge was transitory. Liz, Jenny, the whole fellowship I had built up around myself, would also depart, taking jobs in far-flung history departments across the country. Would UCLA really feel closer to home than London? California was the same six hours from the East Coast and just as culturally divorced.
Colin and I hadn’t discussed it, not since Jeremy had dropped his bombshell. There’s nothing like the rumor of buried treasure to effectively change the topic.
Jeremy swore that the Pink Carnation had somehow run off with the missing treasure of the Rajah of Berar, lost during the third Mahratta War in 1803, and hidden it in Selwick Hall. I could have told him that the Pink Carnation had never been in India, or in Berar, at least not according to my research, but Jeremy wasn’t interested in fact when legend was far more enticing. What with confronting Jeremy, herding everyone else into dinner, and apologizing to Micah Stone, there hadn’t been much time to talk about our future.
And since then…Well, let’s just say that both Colin and I are very good at avoiding things. Neither of us are what you would call “let’s talk about our feelings” types, which means lots of time spent talking around things and playing with subtext. Clever, but not precisely healthy.
On the plus side, at least Serena and Colin were speaking again. She was staying in the house for the week, having been given a very small walk-on role in the film. She looked lovely in her scoop-necked Regency frock, even if a bit bony around the collarbones.
Between the film people and Serena—not to mention having to run off all the crazies who had been attracted by the rapidly spreading rumors of buried treasure—there really hadn’t been time to talk, I rationalized to myself.
Excuses, excuses.
“They’re lucky to have such good weather for the filming,” I said, looking at my rapidly freckling arms instead of at Colin. “Isn’t it great that it didn’t rain?”
“Mmph,” said Colin. It was a very expressive “mmph.” I felt him shift uncomfortably against the balustrade. “Eloise…”
“And the flowers look so pretty!” I babbled.
“Eloise.” Colin took me by the shoulders and very gently turned me around. There was nowhere to look but at him. Or, more accurately, the second button from the top on his button-down blue shirt. “We need to talk.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” I said. “Expression of emotion, state of the relationship, that sort of thing?”
I have mentioned that I’m very good at talking around things, right?
Colin let out his breath in a long exhalation that ruffled the hair on my brow. “Do you want to go back to the States?”
I tried to jam my hands into pockets that I didn’t have. Blast this good weather. “It isn’t so much about want,” I said slowly. “My career is there. My apartment is there.” Already, it was apartment, not flat. I’d gone back to Americanisms in my head. “I can’t presume on your hospitality forever.”
“Hospitality?” Colin’s laugh had an edge to it. “Christ, Eloise. You make me sound like a bed-and- breakfast.”
I licked my dry lips. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m presuming anything. I don’t want you to feel crowded.”
There was a long moment of silence. Colin pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, the way he did when he was tired. I knew that gesture now, so well, just as I knew so many other things without knowing I knew them, like the way he tilted his head when he was thinking, or automatically removed the cushion before he sat down on the couch. I would miss him so much if I left. I would miss not just the conversations, but the essential Colin-ness of him, all those intangibles I got to take for granted, his laugh, his smell, the comfort of curling up against him at the end of the long day. No matter how good the phone plan, one could never get that back, not the same way.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Colin said, “for however long you like, in whatever capacity you like. How’s that for an invitation?”
“Can I have it engraved?” I have a very bad habit of trying to make a joke out of those things about which I feel most strongly. It’s a defense mechanism, I suppose, and sometimes an inconvenient one.
“There are silver platters, if you’d like one,” said Colin. “Although I believe they’re mostly silver plate.”
“No. Thank you.” I looked down at my feet, at the weather-pitted stone of the veranda, the stray tendrils of ivy creeping between the flags. “It’s a very generous offer. Even without the platter.”
Colin was a bright boy. He knew, even without my telling him.
“But,” he said.
“But,” I agreed. I balled my hands into fists, feeling my old class ring biting into my skin, like an anchor to my past. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer. And it’s not that I don’t want to be with you. Because I do. Really.”
Shaking back my hair, I glanced anxiously up at Colin, the breeze whipping strands of hair in front of my eyes, blurring my sight, making my eyes water. He nodded to show that he understood, although I could tell that he didn’t.
“I’m taking the job,” I said. My throat felt stiff and tight, reluctant to give voice to the words. “The one in the history department.”
Colin’s face revealed nothing. “Why?” he asked.
“It’s too soon.” I tried to make sense of it, as much for myself as for him. “I have a whole life in America. I can’t give it up on the strength of six months—no matter how wonderful those six months might have been. Might
